Conservationists are celebrating a new law in California that expands the state’s building energy-use benchmarking program to include multifamily housing and facilitates the implementation of the state’s log-jammed commercialbuilding benchmarking program. The law, which will give owners of buildings larger than 50,000 sq ft easier access to wholebuilding electric utility data, makes California the first U.S. state to have such a comprehensive benchmarking program.
“We are celebrating,” says Maria Stamas, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council. NRDC, with the California Energy Commission (CEC), led a coalition that supported Assembly Bill No. 802 (AB 802), sponsored by Assembly Member Das Williams and signed into law on Oct. 8 by Gov. Jerry Brown (D).